Wednesday, December 9, 2015

The cume areco 'understand' idiom in Timucua

Cume means 'heart, soul'  in Timucua and areco means 'make'.  The combination of the two quasi-idiomatically means 'understand', and this is a frequent beginning of the confessional material, in the form 'you must understand X'.  This is expressed in a few ways, but one of the most common is

cume areco-no        le-habe
heart make-nmzr    be-irr

'Understanding will be'  = 'You must understand'.

Some textual examples:

  'You must understand, this evil person that I explained to you previously, Lucifer, the hiti as you say'

'You must understand this, due to Adam and Eve, the heavens, as I previously said to you, are closed...'